DevOps engineers continue to be in high demand. In fact, DevOps is used by 88 percent of technology professionals who work with open source, according to the Linux Foundation’s 2021 Open Source Jobs Report, and the role is at the top of LinkedIn’s list of best tech jobs for 2022.
In this article, we’ll take a look at key skills you need to grow your career as a DevOps engineer.
IT operations and DevOps are closely related fields, notes Christopher Tozzi, with engineers in both roles expected to perform tasks such as:
- Provisioning and configuring infrastructure
- Deploying software
- Monitoring and observing software once it is in production
- Providing feedback to developers to help them plan updates to applications
“DevOps engineers are also expected to be heavily involved in processes related to software development. The extent to which DevOps engineers actually write application code may vary from one job to the next, but DevOps specialists are expected to have, at a minimum, a thorough understanding of coding and software engineering,” Tozzi says.
As Clyde Seepersad, SVP and GM of training and certification at the Linux Foundation, states: “DevOps has become the standard methodology for software development as well as cloud deployment, so those who do not understand the principles and practices of DevOps will struggle.”
Key DevOps concepts include:
- Automation
- Cloud
- Collaboration and communication
- Continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD)
- Infrastructure as code
- System administration
According to Dice, the technical skills required for DevOps positions “range from Linux fundamentals and scripting knowledge to hands-on knowledge of various development, testing and deployment technologies (i.e., DevOps tools such as Jenkins, Kubernetes, Git, Docker, Chef or Puppet).”
Dice notes the following specialized skills that frequently occur in DevOps-related job postings:
- Python
- Linux
- Ansible
- Kubernetes
- Java
- Chef
Many DevOps tools have been developed to make collaboration and development easier, notes Hackr.io. In addition to the the tools included in the above list, Hackr.io mentions the following as top DevOps tools to know:
- Slack
- Jenkins
- Docker
- Splunk Phantom
- Nagios
- Vagrant
- GitHub
- Sentry
- Bitbucket
Check out the resources below for more information about essential DevOps tools and training.
Learn More
- 9 Essential Skills for AWS DevOps Engineers from Pluralsight
- Become a DevOps Engineer from LinkedIn Learning
- Best DevOps Automation Tools from Cloudify
- DevOps Bootcamp from the Linux Foundation
Ready to find a job? Check out the latest job listings at Open Source JobHub.
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